The ruling Bahujan Samaj Party has swept the panchayat chiefs’ elections by winning 55 seats — 23 of them unopposed — while the Samajwadi Party trailed behind with 10 seats.
The Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal could manage two seats each while the BJP lagged behind with just one seat. The results of Etah seat have been withheld on court orders. Results on the 70 seats of District Panchayat Chairmen were declared late on Sunday night.
The BSP won the elections in Jaunpur, Sonebhadra, Muzaffarnagar, Mirzapur, Badaun, Allahabad, Pratapgarh, Sant Kabir Nagar, Agra, Pilibhit, Aligarh, Ferozabad, Kannauj, Bareilly, Kanpur, Deoria, Azamgarh, Ambedkar Nagar, Moradabad, Basti, Ballia, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Saharanpur, Hardoi, Jhansi, Shahjahanpur, Hathras, Farukkhabad, Fatehpur, Barabanki, Sultanpur and Chitrakoot.
The Samajwadi Party won the elections in Ramabai Nagar (formerly Kanpur Dehat), Lalitpur, Faizabad, Bahraich, Ghazipur, Jalaun, Gonda, Aurraiya, Mainpuri and Etawah. The Congress victory was restricted to Rae Bareli and Amethi (now Chhatrapati Shahuji Maha-raj Nagar) while the BJP could win only the Maharajganj seat.
If the results of these elections are any indication, the main contests in the next assembly elections will be between the BSP and the SP while the Congress will, once again, emerge as a side player like the BJP.
Though the Congress, as well as the Samajwadi Party, claim that there has been a large scale misuse of government machinery by the ruling BSP in these elections, the fact remains that the BSP has emerged a winner all through.
The performance of the Congress in the polls amply demonstrates that the party has not expanded beyond Rae Bareli and Amethi, which are the constituencies of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi respectively.
The party’s level of preparedness or the next assembly elections is abysmally low and the Congress is unlikely to gain much if it continues with its laid-back attitude.
The BJP, meanwhile, is placed in a similar situation by ranking fourth in the polls. The party has to literally begin from a scratch if it wishes to register its presence in state politics in the next Assembly polls.
The BSP, on the other hand, has displayed its readiness in organisational matters once again. The party had earlier decided to stay away from the panchayat elections but later decided to contest the district panchayat chairmen’s elections when it found that several party leaders had got their relatives to contest the panchayat polls without informing the party high command.